Kenny Chesney Taking Next Year Off the Road

August 2, 2013

KennyChesney fans better make plans to catch the remaining dates of his No Shoes Nation tour. The country superstar has decided he won’t tour at all next summer. Instead, Kenny plans to focus on making the follow-up to his latest album, Life on a Rock.

Kenny tells The Hollywood Reporter, “I shouldn’t make albums to service the tour. So I’m going to put the music first, dial it back and do the strangest thing in the world: not hit the road next summer.”

Kenny’s passion for playing live is still strong, and it’s going to be tough for him to do without the high of performing for his fans night after night. “I love touring more than anyone in the world,” Kenny confesses. “I love the band, the crew, the whole team — and it’s weird to not be looking at next year’s stage design.”

Since Life on a Rock was such a highly personal project, Kenny feels the need to go out and live some more life before he records his next studio album. That’s hard to do when he’s heading up a major touring organization.

Kenny says, “You get to a point when you’ve made a lot of albums and you need to challenge yourself, to really make the record the focus, to ask yourself what you want to say…and not just cut songs because they fit what people expect,” he says. “It’s a lot harder to find those songs than you’d think, and writing takes time — to think, to live, to be.”

Kenny continues his No Shoes Nation tour with a big show at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome on Saturday. He’ll close out the trek August 23 and 24 with a two-night stand at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts.